Abstinence-Education Backers Tout New Oversight

Abstinence-education advocates are applauding the recent move of the nation's two largest abstinence programs to a new agency within the Department of Health and Human Services. In the recent federal spending bill, oversight of the programs was moved from the HHS Health Resources and Services Administration's Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB) to the Administration for Children and Families (ACF).

ACF will now oversee the $50 million Title V and $104 million Special Projects of Regional and National Significance Community-Based Abstinence Education grant programs.

HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson moved oversight of the programs to ACF so they could be integrated into "the broader positive youth-development perspective that we have been pursuing here at ACF," said ACF head Wade Horn, who is a child psychologist. Sexual abstinence "is the only 100 percent effective way" for a teen to avoid becoming a parent or getting an STD, said Horn. "The goal is to find the most effective strategies to help young people make that choice."

"Wade Horn's leadership and commitment to abstinence will be a tremendous benefit to abstinence education," said Bruce Cook, founder of Choosing the Best abstinence program. Horn "will do a wonderful job of promoting the [abstinence] message with the passion and commitment it deserves," said Libby Gray, director of the Glenview, Ill., Project Reality abstinence group.

But Marcela Howell, public-policy director at Advocates for Youth, which supports comprehensive sexual education, said, "We're concerned about the politics that may go into the oversight of these programs." Horn, she said, "clearly has an ideology to push. ... It's very political."

The oversight changes follow years of grumbling by abstinence advocates that MCHB sometimes gave grants to programs that promoted condom use. Grantees must teach abstinence is "the expected standard" for school-age children and that non-marital sexual activity "is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects."

Back to other news for December 30, 2004